478 APPENDIX. 



They are all w^st of tlie Cascade Mountains, and tl](".r pros- 

 perity Irds been and will be dependent upon commerce, agri- 

 culture, andni;mufactures; while in the east part of the Terri- 

 tory a number of mining towns, some of them scarcely a year 

 old, liaye sprung up nv.d already surpassed their more aged 

 rivals. Walla Walla, three hundred miles from the mouth of 

 the Columbia River, and thirty miles southeast from the junc- 

 tion of the Snake and Columbia, is the chief trading point 

 of the new gold-mines discovered and opened in 1861 in the 

 basins of the Salmon and Clearwater Rivers. Walla Vv^alla 

 has novv^ a population of one thousand persons, nearly all men, 

 and nearly all of them dwelling in rude huts, which would be 

 deserted very soon if trade should prove unprofitable. In the 

 vicinity of the town is a military post, called New Fort Walla 

 ^Yalla, to distinguish it from Old Fort Walla Walla, which 

 stood on the bank of the Columbia at the mouth of Snake 

 river. Lewiston, seventy-five miles northeast from Walla 

 I'S^alla, on the east bank of Snake River near the mouth of 

 the Clearwater, is a new town, forty miles from the Clear- 

 water or Nez Perces mines. At a distance of eighty-seven 

 miles from Lewiston, on the bank of Oro Fino creek, is Oro 

 Fino City, the chief mining camp and central point of the 

 Nez Perces gold-mines; the dwellings are rude cabins, huts, 

 and tents ; the po])ulation is about three hundred. Elk City, 

 fifty miles southeast from Oro Fino City, on the bank of the 

 south f)rk of the Clearwater River, is the second mining town 

 in size in the Nez-Perces mines ; population one hundred and 

 fifty. Florence City, one hundred and fifty miles east-south- 

 east from Lewiston, is the chief town of the Salmon River 

 placers, and has about two hundred inhabitants. A multitude 

 of other little mining camps have lately arisen in the N'ez-Ferces 

 and Salmon River placers. — Among the rivers of Washington, 

 the Columbia has the first place. It is a large stream where 

 it enters the Territory from British America, and after running 

 about four hundred miles in a southward direction, but making 

 great bends, it turns westward, and from Walla Walla, three 



